Everyone Has a Story

Everyone’s Got a Story

Sharon
Fuller has been in the press a lot lately. A life-long resident of
Richmond, California, she was recently named Woman of the Year by
California Assemblymember Loni Hancock and Lt. Governor Cruz
Bustamante. Fuller is also one of twelve residents to recently receive
the Koshland Award from The San Francisco Foundation; the diverse group
of recipients now forms a sustainable development task force, each
bringing unique experiences and perspectives from around the Bay Area.

Honored for her dedication and commitment to youth advocacy, Fuller
says these awards are a coup for Maat Youth Academy (MYA)an
organization she founded in 1994 as a project of Earth Islandand
thinks of those who work with her as co-recipients. Its great to get
recognition of work that weve been doing for ten years.

Ten
years ago, Fuller saw a need for urban communities to become more
involved in their local environments. She began to address this need by
creating MYA with two branches: advocacy and education. Both are
designed to improve the quality of life in urban areas and communities
of color, says Fuller. What we do is use education as a vehicle for
bringing about change.

MYA created an urban ecology
curriculum, in accordance with the California Science Framework, that
Fuller and others bring into science classrooms in high schools in the
Bay Area. Education that links to the local environment and engages
students by bringing in things that are relevant to their experiences
is one way to enhance academic achievement, says Fuller. In these
urban schools, where just half of African American and Latino tenth
graders will go on to graduate, improving academic interest is a
priority. If were losing these kids at tenth grade, where are they
going? asks Fuller. Our kids are falling through the cracks.

Fuller makes it clear that the environment shes talking about is not a
nature preserve or wilderness area. Shes talking about where people
live, the quality of air and water and food, and the cleanliness,
health, and safety of their immediate surroundings. Fuller and the
staff of MYA, with Earth Islands administrative support, provide urban
students wiith the skills to protect their local resources.

MYAs mission is two-fold: to engage students in their own habitat with
a curriculum that is personally relevant, and to enhance their science
and math skills. Environmental education is often viewed as
extracurricular, but our model can be used to enhance academic
achievement and engage students fully in the civic areas of their
communities, says Fuller. We have to show the students that they can
be the policy makers.

Its not just students who respond
positively to MYAs science curriculum. The teachers love it, says
Fuller. And once the teachers learn that the curriculum is offered for
a nominal fee  MYA fundraises to offset the costs of its own
programthey love it even more. Fuller says that MYA wants to ensure
that its curriculum is available to all urban students, not just those
who attend well-funded schools.

Fuller is currently leading a
student study on the effects of eating mercury-laden fish from the
waters of the Bay Area. There is a correlation between developmental
problems and where a child lives, learns, and plays, she says.
Exposure to mercury, a neurotoxin, is a major concern for our
community, which has a large subsistence fishing population. In
conjunction with the Fish Consumption Study, Fuller is also heading a
campaign to have appropriate signs placed around the entire Richmond
Harbor, detailing the deleterious effects of eating mercury-laden fish.

Fuller earned her B.S. degree in Conservation and Resource
Studies from UC Berkeley, and her M.S. in Environmental Education from
CSU Hayward. She is a Contra Costa County Hazardous Materials
Commissioner and a member of the Point Molate Restoration Advisory
Board. And she has continued to use all of her knowledge to improve her
community, the quality of life for local children and youth, and to
educate those around her in ways to improve their own local
environment. Her ultimate goal, she says, is to create a system of
community monitors who will use the skills we provide them with to
improve the conditions in their communities.